Learn About New Green Building Code at Summit

Community colleges such as West Hills in Lemoore, Firebaugh and Coalinga are on the front lines of the efforts to "green" America's workforce.

Toward that end comes the Green California Community College Summit Oct. 12 and 13 in Pasadena.

Speakers include Doug Henton, chairman and chief executive of Collaborative Economics, who will discuss green job development in California, and Alec Loorz, the teenage founder of Kids Vs. Global Warming.

Professionals in career technical education, workforce investment boards and economic development are encouraged to attend.
Participants will learn about CALGreen, the state's new green-building code that is effective in January 2011.

The event is at the Pasadena Convention Center. Information: Cindy Dangberg, summit director, 626-577-5700, cdangberg@green-technology.org.

How Green Will My Valley Be? Plenty, Report Says

About 1.2 million square feet of commercial and campus structures between Merced and Bakersfield are LEED certified, but many more could obtain some sort of green certification in the next decade as environmental and energy awareness continue to increase.

A report by clean-energy consultant Pike Research says the amount of property certified as green could increase from 6 billion square feet worldwide to a whopping 53 billion square feet in only 10 years.

LEED - Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - is considered one of the highest ratings for sustainable construction. The number of structures achieving that rating, or other green certifications, should climb until 2020 because of new regulations, desire for better energy efficiency and lower power bills, the ability to command higher rents and property values and increasing awareness in all things green will drive the movement, researchers said.

"Green building techniques are increasingly becoming the standard within the architecture and construction industries," said research analyst Eric Bloom. . . "There are three major drivers behind green building certifications: environmental responsibility, reducing operating expenses through energy efficiency and regulatory requirements that mandate energy efficiency and certifications."

The "green" movement is expected to be evident in other industries too. Another report by Pike Research says investments in green data centers - in an effort to cut energy bills and carbon emissions - will climb over the next five years from $7.5 billion in global revenue to $41.4 billion - representing 28% of the entire market.

Toss old energy savings lessons out the window

Growing up with a closet Jewish father raised in hiding in World War II Europe meant I learned a lot of life lessons.

Many were absolutely useless:

• Don't turn on the furnace until Thanksgiving. He lived in Seattle, which meant ice-cold floors in the morning and layers of clothing at all times.
• Save everything. The basement of my father's tiny house was crammed with plastic containers, old paint from 50-plus years of unfinished projects, a dismantled motorcycle, an old claw-foot tub filled with garden hoses, tables, our old foam-leaking sofa from the 1960s and pick-up load of empty egg cartons.
• Turn off all lights. My Hungarian grandmother switched off all the lights and spent evenings using only the light of the TV to do her needlework.

There were more (just thinking about them makes me groan), but it's penchant for turning off lights that my family shared with a majority of the American public. A recent report that I first caught sight of on greentechmedia.com says that when asked for the most effective energy-saving strategy, most participants in an online survey mentioned turning off lights and driving less rather than installing more efficient light bulbs and appliances. This conflicts with experts’ recommendations, according to "Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings," a survey of about 500 by Shahzeen Z. Attaria, Michael L. DeKayb, Cliff I. Davidsonc and Wändi Bruine de Bruinc.

They hail from Columbia University, Ohio State University, Carnegie Mellon University and the editor came from Harvard. The study was published online this week in the scientific research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They didn't paint an overly pretty picture of the general public's understanding of energy efficiency, through which energy savings of more than 30 percent can be achieved through better lighting, improved air conditioning and heating, variable frequecy drive electric motors, cool roofs and insulation.

"For a sample of 15 activities, participants underestimated energy use and savings by a factor of 2.8 on average," the study said. "If households effectively implemented all of (Gerald) Gardner and (Paul) Stern’s (who published "The Short List: The Most Effective Actions U.S. Households Can Take to Curb Climate Change" in Environment Magazine in 2008) recommended changes, U.S. energy consumption would be reduced by approximately 11 percent."

Big stuff. But at the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization, we know that. Using compact fluorescent lighting, dumping the old appliances for Energy Star units and upgrading the AC -- it all saves cash. And the upgrades pay for themselves relatively quickly.

"Those in the study also overrated the savings of many activities, including driving slowly on the highway, recycling glass containers or unplugging chargers when not in use," wrote Katherine Tweed of greentechmedia.com. "Even people who described themselves as having a high degree of pro-environmental behavior did not always report engaging in a large number energy-efficient habits and actions."

No surprise there. I like to think I'm pro-environment but I enjoy the comforts of fossil fuels, a warm house in winter and AC. Even so, all of us could do with a little painless energy efficiency retrofits. It'll get that foreign oil monkey on our backs to ease up a little.

Solar foam and recycled plastic blocks battle for Earth Awards

Here's some foam that would be way out of place atop a cold beer.

A photosynthetic artificial foam that harnesses solar energy has been designed by University of Cincinnati Professor David Wendell and Dean Carlo Montemagno. The substance is one of a half dozen innovations up for an Earth Award, which could land the winner $50,000 and team the designer with investors.

The Earth Awards are billed as "a global design award backed by world-leading entrepreneurs" that identify innovations that have the potential to improve the quality of life.

Finalists like Wendell and Montemagno will pitch their projects to leading CEOs at the Investors to Innovators Summit in London on Sept. 16, according to officials staging the event. One of the judges is Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council.

"Nothing is impossible," said Ira Magaziner, a selection committee member and chairman of the William J. Clinton Foundation, established by the former U.S. president to identify and take action on global problems. "And nothing beats the power of partnership in realising dreams. That is the fundamental principle of The Earth Awards: to unite the world's greatest innovators with the business people and investors who can make their designs a reality."

Also up for the award are:

• Sustainable Shells, which developer Professor Michael Ramage at the University of Cambridge Sidney Sussex College in England describes as "highly engineered thin-shell structural masonry built with locally-sourced pressed soil-cement tiles with very low embodied energy and high performance natural-synthetic wood-polymer composites."
• Polli-Bricks by Arthur Huang, MINIWIZ Sustainable Energy Development Co. in Taiwan. The translucent bricks are made from recycled PET bottles and designed to interlock. "Each Polli-Brick can, structurally, interlock with others. So it can be used to build houses," Liu Zi-Wei, co-designer of Polli-Brick, told channelnewsasia.com. "We keep thinking of how we can reuse these bottles. We want to present them in a form that everybody can see, and see it immediately."
• Kayu Sunglasses by Jamie Lim from San Francisco. Sfgate.com ran a story on the bamboo glasses that said, "For each pair sold, the San Francisco company donates the cost of one eye surgery needed to correct preventable blindness through the nonprofit Unite for Site."
• AskNature by The Biomimicry Institute, represented by Megan Schuknecht. The institute describes the collaborative-building venture this way: "AskNature is a free, open source project, built by the community and for the community. Our goal is to connect innovative minds with life's best ideas, and in the process, inspire technologies that create conditions conducive to life."
• The Butterfly Houses by Andreas Grontvedt Gjertsen, TYIN Tengestue, Norway were "created in response to the need to provide more housing for child refugees in Noh Bo, a small village along the Thai-Burmese border. Completed in February this year, the six cabins now offer hospitality to 24 orphans," said the blog Design Ideas.

Wendy Beckman at the University of Cinncinati said Wendell and Montemagno "are finding ways to take energy from the sun and carbon from the air to create new forms of biofuels, thanks to a semi-tropical frog species." She quoted Montemagno as saying the innovation "presents a new pathway of harvesting solar energy to produce either oil or food."

The Coolest School in the nation

Vermont's Green Mountain College nabbed the top spot in Sierra magazine's fourth annual Coolest Schools environmental sustainability ranking, while two California schools, Stanford placed fifth and University of California Irvine sixth.

Green Mountain -- a school of about 900 students -- was one my colleague suggested and recommended to his daughter, who ultimately chose the University of Oregon, which didn't crack the top 100.

The University of California Merced placed 39th. Other California schools included UC Santa Cruz at No. 11, UC Davis No. 16, UCLA No. 25, Pomona College No. 31, UC Berkeley No. 32 and UC Santa Barbara 44.

The rankings were based on responses to an 11-page questionnaire and how colleges measured up in terms of commitment to sustainability. Energy supply carried the most significance, followed by efficiency, food, academics, purchasing, transportation, waste management, administration, financial investments and a catchall section titled "other initiatives."

Where appropriate, standards like the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification were used, the magazine said.

The Coolest Schools list is the cover story for the September/October issue of Sierra magazine, a publication of the Sierra Club.

"Green Mountain College excels in most categories, and it's the MVP when it comes to creativity. The campus gets power and heat from biomass and biogas (a.k.a. cow power)," the magazine said.

Green Mountain has a new combined heat and power biomass plant and participates in Central Vermont Public Service's Cow Power program, which converts cow manure on Vermont farms to methane gas, the school said in a statement. The new plant will use local wood chips to provide 85 percent of the school's heat and generate 20 percent of its electricity.

"Green Mountain established its environmental liberal arts mission in 1995, so we are an 'early adapter' in responding to the social and environmental challenges of our times," said Green Mountain President Paul J. Fonteyn. "Through our Environmental Liberal Arts program, we've sought to provide an education that emphasizes sustainability across all disciplines. This recognition is a testament to all the hard work of a whole generation of students, faculty and staff."

Avital Binshtock and Kyle Boelte wrote in a post on sierraclub.org that the magazine shifted priorities in this year's survey after consulting the Club's conservation experts, "who encouraged us to give more weight to each school's energy supply."

That adjustment meant this year's top 20 includes nine newcomers and elevated Green Mountain, which placed 35th last year. No school scored a perfect 100 score. Green Mountain came closest with 88.6.

"Although we worked hard to apply rigorous, objective standards when evaluating the questionnaires, a certain amount of subjectivity was inevitable, and we hope that readers (and the growing legion of college sustainability officers) will bear that in mind," wrote Binshtock and Boelte. "The point, after all, is to create competition, to generate awareness and to celebrate that so many colleges even have a sustainability officer."

Through this project and several other initiatives, Green Mountain officials said they expect to be the first college in the country to reach carbon neutrality after having reduced carbon emissions by more than half. The college also received a score of 98 out of a perfect 99 in the Princeton Review's annual college "green" rankings and its Students for Academic and Green Engagement, or SAGE, Hall was designated as LEED gold certified building by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Princeton Review gave UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara honor roll status in its green rankings for schools that achieve perfect ratings.

This Town Is So Green It Produces Energy

Some clean-energy advocates think Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley - with its ample sunshine, expanse of flat land, lots of farm and animal waste, super-high power bills (mine nearly equaled my house payment last month) and proximity to transmission lines - has all the ingredients to become self energy sufficient.

Which brings to mind this article I read on Huffington Post. There is a neighborhood in Germany that produces four times the energy it uses, in part through thoughtful planning and careful placement of rooftop solar arrays.

It's not only net zero. It's net positive. Read about it here.

The Nation's Greenest Prison

As I scrolled through the green-building forums the other day, this item stopped me. I've never really associated "green" with "prison", but there really is no reason why those standards can't be applied to such institutions.

After all, prisons consume large amounts of energy and space. So, they're perfect for green technology.

Anyway, here's the story on the greenest prison in America, Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in the state of Washington.

(Photo from Department of Corrections)

Three Reasons To Divert Material To Landfills

A non-profit organization devoted to diverting building materials from landfills has expanded to the Central Valley, providing more green options for builders, potential tax savings for property owners and employment opportunities in the field of "deconstruction."

The ReUse People salvages building materials - everything from toilets to landscaping to drywall - and packages it up to resell at bargain prices. The goal is to deconstruct rather than demolish a building.

Alex Breitler of The Stockton Record describes it as "watching a house being built in reverse" in this story about ReUse's expansion to the Valley. The ReUse People, which is based in Oakland, recently opened a warehouse in Sacramento to sell the recycled merchandise to do-it-yourselfers, other nonprofits and the budget conscious.

The organization has recycled about 270,000 tons of building material since it debuted in 1993, said Kristin Williams, the group's Central Valley manager.

Williams said the primary mission is to divert construction material from landfills, but also noted that property owners can get a pretty tidy tax write off and that contractors, who are struggling in this real estate recession, can use deconstruction to generate work.

Founded in 1993, the organization's best year was 2008 when 200 houses in California were deconstructed. The ReUse People will teach the deconstruction trade through courses. If interested, there's more on the Web site.

(photo from GREENBEANCHICAGO.com)